Skiing is the act of a user gliding over a snow-covered surface with extended skis attached to each foot. Necessary equipment for skiing includes boots, bindings, and skis. A user's performance is directly related to their physical abilities and the characteristics of their equipment. Various improvements in equipment performance therefore enable a skier to improve their skiing performance without necessarily improving their physical abilities. However, technical improvements must be balanced with the potential negative effects caused by the improvements, so as not to increase one characteristic while significantly decreasing a different characteristic thereby negating the improvements in overall performance.
One of the common problems with conventional skis is weight. Traditional skis are composed of wood and/or fiberglass to take advantage of flexibility properties. During a ski turn or transition, a ski may flex or bend to enable redirection in the snow. Originally, weight was not considered an important performance characteristic; thus, skis were very long and made of heavy wood materials. Various types of skiing benefit greatly from lighter weight skis including ski transportation, backcountry skiing (off-piste), telemark, alpine touring, etc. A shift was made to shorter fiberglass skis to minimize weight among other performance factors. However, fiberglass skis require an inherent minimum weight to maintain acceptable performance. Therefore, the evolution of even lighter weight skis such as carbon-fiber skis represents an advancement in the ability to further reduce ski weight while maintaining performance.
While the overall weight of a carbon-fiber ski is lower than conventional wood and fiberglass skis, the rotational flex, torsion, and stability characteristics of carbon-fiber skis are different. These differences may be advantageous or limiting, depending on a skier's ability and preferences. Some skiers may notice more difficulty executing a turn and/or holding an edge at certain speeds and under certain skiing conditions using a lightweight carbon-fiber ski. This difficulty is attributable to the natural rotational inertia properties of carbon-fiber. While carbon has an inherently high torsional rigidity, the lengthwise rotational rigidity is relatively lower than other commonly used ski materials. Likewise, other lightweight ski materials may also exhibit similar flexibility affects thereby partially negating their improvements in overall weight.
Therefore, there is a need in the industry for a system that improves the high-speed stability performance of a lightweight ski without dramatically increasing the overall weight. The system should be applicable to any lightweight skiing system including carbon-fiber skis.